The present invention concerns the field of electrical installations for a domestic grid and in particular electrical installations using renewable energy.
Such an installation 1, visible in FIG. 1, generally includes a domestic grid connected to the mains electrical power grid and to systems 2 generating electricity from renewable energy such as wind turbines or solar panels. These systems may include a solar module or a wind turbine module. These systems generating electricity from renewable energy are provided with one or more micro-inverters so as to supply an output signal compatible with the domestic grid. This signal S1 is sent to a gateway unit 3. This system S1 includes a modulated component permitting the exchange of information between the systems generating electricity from renewable energy and the gateway unit.
This gateway unit 3 is used to read the information from the modulated component and then filter it so that any imperfections are removed from the output signal before it is injected into the domestic grid. This unit therefore includes a filter 6, a read circuit 5 and a control circuit 4 for controlling the entire unit.
In the prior art, where systems generating electricity from renewable energy include a plurality of modules, then each module provides a power signal S1, S2, S3 and is associated with a gateway unit 3.
The drawback of this configuration is that it requires one gateway unit per module. Since each gateway unit includes a filter 6, a read circuit 5 and a control circuit 4, multiplying the number of modules and thus the number of gateway units leads to higher costs.
Further, there are known, from the article by E. Roman et al: Intelligent PV module for Grid-Connected PV systems, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, vol. 53, no 4, Jan. 6, 2006, systems including a plurality of solar modules, with each solar module including a solar panel. Each solar panel is associated with a DC-DC converter having the function of detecting the maximum power point tracking point or “MPPT”. The entire assembly is then connected to a DC-AC converter to power an electrical power grid.
These solar panels are connected to a control circuit which retrieves information from the panels.
However, these systems are devised for single phase grids and, when applied to multiphase grids, they require one gateway unit for each additional phase.
There is also known from US Patent No 2011/0031814 a system including several photovoltaic panels, the photovoltaic panels are arranged in groups and connected to an inverter circuit via a junction box. This junction box makes it possible to provide information from the solar panels. The objective here is to have only one gateway unit for all the photovoltaic panels, application to a multi-phase grid does not appear to be intended.
The document by Kurokawa K et al: Conceptual considerations on PV systems composed of AC modules, Solar energy materials and solar cells, Elsevier Science Publishers, Amsterdam, NL, is a document describing photovoltaic systems including AC modules, one such AC module being defined as including one photovoltaic module and one inverter.
However, the systems described in the above document do not describe the presence of a gateway module and cannot therefore be used for the applications of the present invention.